Ghana's new president John Dramani Mahama has been sworn in at the Independence Square in Accra and incidentally is also the fourth consecutive “John,” to ascend the high office of the President.

President John Mahama born on November 29, 1958 at Damongo, in the Northern Region of Ghana, is a communications expert, historian, and writer, former Member of Parliament and Minister of State, and immediate former Vice-President of Ghana. He ascended to the high office of President following the death of the incumbent President John Evans Atta Mills on Tuesday, July 24 2012 in Accra.

In April 1997, President Mahama was appointed Deputy Minister of Communications and rose to become the substantive Minister of Communications by November 1998; it was a position he held until January 2001 when the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which was then the ruling party, handed over power to the newly elected New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration when the NDC lost the December 2000 elections.

In 2000, President Mahama was re-elected for another four-year term as the MP for the Bole/Bamboi Constituency and was again re-elected in 2004 for a third term.

From 2001 to 2004, President Mahama served as the Minority Parliamentary Spokesman for Communications and in 2002 he was appointed the Director of Communications for the NDC. That same year, he served as a member of the team of international observers selected to monitor Zimbabwe's Parliamentary Elections.

President Mahama also served as a member of the National Economic Management Team, a founding member of the Ghana AIDS Commission, a member of the implementation committee of the 2000 National Population Census, and a deputy chairman of the Publicity Committee for the re-introduction of the Value Added Tax (VAT).In 2005 he was, additionally, appointed the Minority Spokesman for Foreign Affairs. He served in these capacities until 2008, when he was handpicked to become the running-mate to the then NDC presidential candidate, Professor John Evans Atta Mills.

President Mahama was declared winner of the December 2012 election where he polled 5,574,761 representing 50.70 per cent on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as against his close contender, the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who had 5,248,898 of the valid votes cast, representing 47.74 per cent.